


completely and utterly

by Bagell



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Cursing/Profanity, F/F, Food, Grief/Mourning, Izzy pushes things down to support others, Other Mentioned Characters and Ships, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e22 All Good Things..., Trigger/Content Warnings:, Vulnerability, i seem to like writing characters learning to be honest, izzy just thinks it's better if she doesn't express it, kind of turned into a, lowkey, the clizzy is heavily implied to be one-sided, the ending is happy but the whole of the fic is not, they're all hurting a lot, which isn't true
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 08:22:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20224768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bagell/pseuds/Bagell
Summary: In the two months since the angels snatched Clary away, Izzy aches and keeps the true depth of her emotion deep down inside in favor of holding Jace and Simon as they grieve.At a family dinner in the Hunter's Moon, Isabelle bumps into Maia, who helps her to feel and to let her feelings out again.





	completely and utterly

**Author's Note:**

> hi! so i really didn't think this would get as angsty or low-plot as it did. the original plan was for maiabelle to become each other's support systems through the full year of clary being gone and for the scenes to be a progression of that
> 
> but this is what ended up happening and i hope u enjoy it nonetheless! i'm usually more inclined to writing fluff so this was a bit unexpected 
> 
> this is for team red in the sh wlw fic bingo, for the prompt post-canon (i hope it counts? i realize now after i've written it that it technically doesn't come AFTER 3x22 bc it takes place in the 1 year timeskip oh jeez)
> 
> [TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNINGS] (feel free to lmk if i missed any! apologies if i did)  
\- alcohol  
\- food  
\- cursing/profanity

It’s been two months since Clary disappeared. Two months since the angels wiped her memories of the Shadow World, and two months since Isabelle lost who she’s convinced was the love of her life.

Two months of crying and only letting her brother and boyfriend see half of it, because they don’t know just how deeply Isabelle’s love for Clary ran. Two months of putting on a brave face for her family despite how close they all know she and Clary were, because on the surface the loss is felt most by Simon, who’s lost his best friend of over a decade, and Jace, who’s lost the first girlfriend he’s cared about so much. Two months of them not knowing Isabelle lost her very best friend, her almost parabatai, and the subject of her heart’s affections.

They all secretly envy Luke, who switches between his new shadowhunter duties and the mundane side of his newly relinquished werewolf life to take care of her in the state of her confusion, having just lost her mother, her best friend, her older sister figure, and all her memories for the past few years. Still, they understand, because someone needs to help Clary through it all and the most logical choice would be Luke, who aches most for his daughter. 

Isabelle breaks up with Simon barely a month after they started being romantically involved, too caught up in the aching of her heart to give him the complex, supportive side of herself he developed feelings for. He pretends he believes her excuse that they should focus on grieving and maybe try again in the future, though she knows he and Jace and everyone around them saw the stolen glances between Clary and Isabelle when Clary was still around. Simon knows the larger reason behind their break up, and he’s kind enough not to point it out. 

But even if they all know that the way in which Izzy felt for Clary wasn’t just platonic, they still don’t know just how deeply, how incredibly harshly, she had fell for Clary.

It is that side of herself that she locks away in favor of comforting her brother and friend (Simon, because though they both know they cannot be together as lovers, they still support each other as friends), that side of herself that she buries even further, because what is the point in feeling so deeply for someone who is no longer there?

It is that side of herself that suddenly rears up one night, that side of herself that chases her to the bar away from her family, just to escape the feelings she hasn’t let herself sink in for so long, that side of herself that she intends to chase away with drink after drink while her mourning family distantly wonder where she’s gone.

That night, they’re at the Hunter’s Moon for a Lightwoods-only dinner. No Luke, no Magnus, no dear friends or significant others, just Isabelle, Jace, Alec, and Maryse, enjoying a meal together, Alec and Maryse trying to coax Jace into releasing his sadness, because they’ve all seen far too many times what happens when they all try to keep it hidden. Izzy tries to encourage him with them, ignoring the feelings at the pit of her heart that cry out at her hypocrisy.

It’s not until Jace starts talking about how cold it is at night and how hard it is for him to fall asleep that Isabelle’s cheeks begin to burn, that she has to duck her head and pretend something’s fallen in her eye.

She can’t even say anything, doesn’t know what to over the hollowness of her heart when she just looks at Alec desperately and steals away, stumbling to the bar. He lets her. They all let her. Though she never told them, never let the words and feelings tumble off her tongue the way they would off her brothers’ and her mother’s every time they needed a shoulder to cry on, arms to collapse into, they all know at least a little.

Jace pretends not to and Isabelle is glad he does, gives him every opportunity to, because it’s the first time in the never ending traumas of his life that he’s looked so bright and deep in a romantic relationship.

Maryse slowly found out after telling Isabelle she hoped she’d fight for love just like Alec had with Magnus, in the stolen glances that Izzy could never quite hide and the way Izzy knew her eyes would go, all soft and disbelieving, every time she talked about Clary. She knew in all the relationships and dates Isabelle finally felt comfortable to gush to Maryse about, because all of those were for the sake of talking to her mother and not for any hope for love in Izzy’s heart. Because all of that was put into Clary, whether Isabelle liked it or not.

Alec knew most of all, even when Isabelle would never, ever tell anyone, not even him, no matter how hard he tried to coax or force it out of her, because he saw, between his worries and support for Jace, his newfound happiness and stronger sense of identity with Magnus, and the hardships that crashed down on him, the price for his new position and new, unbreakable love, he saw Isabelle. She knows everything she told herself then, that he had too much burden on him to worry about her feelings, her simple _ affections, _ was all an excuse, an excuse she’d been using her whole life. The excuse that made her her family’s strongest supporter and biggest critic, the excuse that made her focus on issues close to her that mattered and _ work _ on them, the excuse that made her happy with each sight of her family happy. The excuse that then lead to feelings for a ginger-haired woman with bright eyes and an uncontainable heart who, no matter what anyone says, leaned on _ Isabelle _ first and foremost, and that lead to her taking a step back as Jace fell just as hard as her.

Despite it all, Alec knows far more than Izzy would like, yet not nearly as much as he thinks, because Izzy’s love for Clary is as big and wide and unfathomably beautiful as his love for Magnus, and if Izzy can hide anything from the family she loves so much, it is that unmistakable fact.

But tonight, tonight is striking far too close, because Isabelle knows exactly as well as Jace what it is like to hold Clary in her sleep, what it is like to wake up and see only _ orange _ when she opens her eyes, what it is like to brush the hair out of her face and see Clary with closed eyes and drawn eyebrows, not even peaceful in her sleep, facing her with her arm draped over her waist. She knows because she’d spent many a night in one of their rooms just listening while Clary poured her heart out and rubbing her back, wiping her tears and catching her in a hug each time she fell. So many nights and sometimes even the middle of the days, because the demons and traumas that come with being a shadowhunter follow no mundane schedule. She told Clary each time how she would never leave, how if all else failed like Izzy knew it wouldn’t, Clary would still always have Isabelle. 

How ironic that after so many years filled with nights of tears and comfort and the same assurances, it was Clary who was ripped from Isabelle instead.

Oh Clary, who had never heard that excuse of Isabelle’s for more than a few days at a time, because after all the years of being nothing but supportive to her brothers, Clary became the only person Izzy knew how to be completely honest to. Never about her longing for a certain kind of love with Clary, no, not about that. But all the other kinds of hurt and emotion Isabelle simultaneously carried and buried for the sake of being strong for her family and for herself, all that was disposed on Clary’s bed, waiting to be picked up and held by the loving redhead Isabelle had come to love so much.

And no, Isabelle is not one to drink her sorrows away, but she’s in a bar and her family has become too stifling (a fact of which is Isabelle’s fault, she knows, but stifling nonetheless), so where else could she go? The Institute is as hollow as Isabelle’s soul without Clary there, and Isabelle knows better than to go demon hunting alone with her heart crying so loudly.

What Isabelle isn’t expecting at the bar is for the flare of an emotion other than hurt to burn through her for the first time in two months. Anger, so strong and fervid above the chasm in her chest.

Because at the bar is Maia, who takes one look at her and says, simply, “No.”

Izzy tumbles onto the barseat, not quite processing, still in her head and the thoughts that are simultaneously too loud and not loud enough. She shakes her head, not trusting herself to speak, but she guesses it conveys her lack of understanding well enough, because Maia responds with an eye roll and puts a glass of water in front of her.

Izzy blinks, and this time it’s her that says “no,” looking at Maia in confusion and a little bit of impatience, because she’d just like _ one _ thing to go completely and utterly the way _ she _ wants. “I didn’t come to the bar for water, Maia.”

Maia looks her up and down and Izzy glares at her as she finishes her tired assessment and responds, “I know. But I don’t serve alcohol to unstable shadowhunters.”

Izzy actually hisses at that, seething. Nothing ever goes the way she wants because she never expresses those wants and the moment she _ does, _everyone turns her down or some bullshit happens like the goddamn angels taking away the closest thing to a happy ending Isabelle has ever had. “It’s not your job to psychoanalyze customers, Maia, just give me a goddamn beer.”

Maia whips her head up to look at her, green eyes flashing in threat for a moment. “Don’t,” she warns. “Tell me how to or not to do my job. Drink the water and shut up or leave my bar.”

Something in Izzy cracks and she simmers down, looking down with a huff and drinking from the glass. It’s honestly like a breath of fresh air, and Izzy knows Maia was right to not serve her anything alcoholic.

That’s the thing about Maia, Izzy thinks distantly. She has this reputation amongst the shadowhunters of New York, but all of that’s just formed on dumb racism and people who don’t want to look too deep into ‘Downworld affairs’. She’s harsh and brutally honest, sure, but only violent when it’s actually warranted, and with shadowhunters, Izzy knows there’s plenty of reason all the time to get violent.

“Are you done?” Maia says, once the glass is all empty and Izzy’s eyes are following Maia as she works, staring more into space than at Maia’s elegant and easy tosses of the shakers and glasses. She tosses a dish towel to the side, already stepping out from behind the counter. “C’mon, I’m off shift.”

Izzy blinks out of her dazedness, staring at Maia. “What?”

Maia rolls her eyes, and Izzy thinks she hears her mutter ‘shadowhunters’ under her breath. “Come with me to the Jade Wolf. What, do you have somewhere better to be?”

Izzy looks back at her family, still talking amongst themselves. Alec is looking at her, and she moves to ask if she’s needed. But when his eyes don’t register, she sees he’s looking behind her, at Maia, silently communicating. Alec nods, and Maia says, “Izzy.”

Isabelle looks at her, suddenly realizing just how lost she feels with all the people she loves still so close by. No, not all the people she loves.

“Please,” Maia says, and now Isabelle sees something else in Maia’s eyes, behind the human brown and wolf green, a vulnerability and a need that Izzy still has not let herself show.

“Okay,” Izzy says, so far from her usual confident and boisterous self, and lets Maia take her hand and lead her away.

They don’t talk as they walk through the New York streets, and the Jade Wolf is quiet when they get there. Two new wolves are there, talking quietly in one of the booths, but Maia only nods to them shortly before leading Isabelle to the table tucked into the very back corner of the restaurant and gesturing for her to sit.

“Stay,” Maia says, so Izzy does. It’s different, not hiding but not showing either, simply following directions blankly and hoping Maia somehow knows how to pull Isabelle out of this hole.

Hoping. That’s a newer one, isn’t it? 

“Eat,” Maia says when she comes back, sliding a plate of beef chow fun to Isabelle. She sits across from her. “I know you didn’t eat anything at the bar.”

Isabelle says nothing, just picks up the fork on the plate and digs in. It’s warm despite the restaurant being long closed, and something in her chest constricts at the thought that Maia heated it up for her. 

“You know that date Clary and Jace went on about a year or two ago?” Maia says, breaking the silence. Izzy says nothing but she listens even as her heart makes a noise of protest. “One where they accidentally picked the same restaurant as Simon and me. Except Jace got the restaurant recommendation from Simon, so I guess that’s not a surprise.” Neither of them laugh. “Anyway, we sat right next to each other, and it was beyond awkward. I was sitting next to Clary, and I think I talked more to her that night than I did to Simon, who was my boyfriend at the time.

“We didn’t really know each other. Well enough to keep a conversation, but not well enough for… that. That night. I had a lot of fun that night. And when I broke up with Simon…” she trails off. “Well, I don’t know. Nothing would’ve come out of me and Clary. But I thought of her. Often. And sometimes she would come to the Jade Wolf, or the Hunter’s Moon, or anywhere else I’d happen to also be at. She would just talk. And I let her. I talked back. We built up this… weird friendship.” Maia stops talking. The silence stretches out for a minute before she continues. “Anyway. I’m not saying I know what you’re feeling, because I don’t and I hate when people pull that bullshit. I was never in love with her.”

It strikes a chord in Izzy, strong enough to break something in her, and she doesn’t know if she’s imagining it when she lets out a quiet sob.

Maia keeps going but she sighs infinitesimally as she looks at Izzy, feeling the weight of the air emotion Izzy’s choking on. “But I did like her. A lot. And I wouldn’t have objected to being her girlfriend if she had asked. Maybe in another life, I would’ve asked her. Just… Izzy,” Maia says. “You’re not the first person I’ve told this to. That’s not the point. You know who else knows this, who you can _ trust _ to tell?”

Izzy doesn’t need to ask, and Maia doesn’t wait for her to.

“Alec.”

Ah, well, that’s expected isn’t it?

“And _ Jace. _”

Isabelle looks up sharply, but not a single shred of earnestness has disappeared from Maia’s eyes. 

“I told them because they’re my friends, and they know what it’s like to keep something in,” Maia says. “Isabelle, I know we’re not close, but I know that no matter how bad they are at being open about their feelings, and no matter how strong you are, when it comes to your innermost thoughts, you’re probably worse than them at letting things out.

“They’re your brothers. They want to be there for you as much as you want to be there for them, and mourning isn’t any easier without you fully there than it is with you letting out your feelings, _ all _ of your feelings.”

And what could Izzy possibly say to that? What could she possibly do except push the plate to the middle of the table so the food doesn’t catch the tear that leak from her eyes, so she has a solid surface to land on when Clary Fairchild isn’t there to catch her collapsing body and collapsing heart?

Except Maia _ is _ there, is _ here, _ and she gathers Isabelle off the unforgiving surface of the table and into her arms, rubbing her back just as Izzy and Clary did for each other, just as Isabelle has done for her family so many times. “Oh, Isabelle,” she hears her whisper, and she sobs harder, burying herself in Maia’s shoulder, choking herself on Maia’s sweater and her own sobs.

Somewhere along the way, somewhere in this new world without the light of Clary’s unfathomable smile, Maia teaches Izzy how to move on. She teaches her how to rely on others again, on her brothers and mom, on _ Maia. _ And finally, ten months later, when Clary starts to come back to them, Isabelle is standing on her own two feet with her family around her and Maia’s hand in hers, ready to welcome her dear love, her best friend, her soulmate back, this time completely and utterly honestly, just the way she wants. 

**Author's Note:**

> (if holly ends up reading this, i sincerely apologize for any pain i've caused)


End file.
